~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

Spectacles

A worldview affects the interpretation of evidence. It is like a pair of spectacles, through which light passes, allowing us to see. If the spectacles are cracked, this does not entail that the world itself is cracked. Rather, it means they are in need of repairing or replacing. This is a fundamental part of the Judeo-Christian concept of repentance: it means changing one’s mind, re-orienting it to God’s view of reality. There are big moments of repentance in the life of a Christian, but also small ones. Understanding and accepting truth in all things is a life-long process of learning. Sometimes we are tempted to compromise what we know to be true; other times, we are confused, trying to step back, take a breath, and make sense of it all.

The differences that the core group at AATW (myself included) have with the Left spring from our fundamentally different worldviews, and this is why, without a change in the fundamentals, dialogue is essentially fruitless. Those who have a utopian view of the aim of politics can never be reconciled with those who accept that life has its inevitable tragedies, rooted in the weakness of human nature and the inclemency of the natural world. Those, like me, who advocate for a diminution of the state do not do so in the belief that such action will automatically and inevitably produce a paradise on earth. Far from it. The free market does not promise to make all things right. Since liberty entails the choice to do evil, a free market approach necessarily involves a risk of evil. In advocating for liberty, we are not promising to make the world a materially perfect place. Rather, we are elaborating a fundamentally deontological view of ethics and human interaction, based on the principle that liberty is inherently valuable, just as life is inherently value.

This reasoning does not mean that a free market entails a poorer world. When people are free to spend their money as they choose, they have the option to give it to charitable schemes and to invest in companies that bring sustainable growth to the world. In such a system, the choice to use money in this way is a kind of virtue. Virtue presupposes free will; without free will, there can be no virtue. When the state spends tax money to do these things, it takes away some opportunities from the individual to do good. Not only that, it also has the power to use the tax-payer’s money to fund what he considers to be evil. An example of this would be the use of tax money to fund abortions against the will of conservative Christians.

The Leftist might respond that virtue is not what is important; results are what counts. Improving the lives of vulnerable people is what matters. If forcibly appropriated resources are necessary, so be it. This view has problems, however. First of all, it assumes the poor would be worse off if people were taxed less, because our selfishness would make us keep the “surplus” to ourselves. This is ultimately a synthetic proposition, a proposition about how the world is. It is not true (or false) by definition. It can only be known by experience. As a prediction about how things will be, it must rely on statistical data – and the data does not uniformly support it.

Secondly, if it is wrong to forcibly appropriate money, then the advocate of statism is forced to balance two evils, and argue that leaving the poor uncared for is worse than appropriating other people’s property. This might be true in the short-term (and even then, that proposition is debatable), but in the long-term it is far from certain. If the long-term effect of state appropriations is a withering of the private economy, and the economy is what actually generates wealth, then there will be less and less wealth to meet the needs of the poor as tax revenue dries up. So this model will only work if poverty is eradicated before the point of economic destruction. Wealth must be generated before it is available to the state for spending.

Lastly, there is the problem of the system itself. The Bible teaches that a workman is worthy of his wages, and most countries in the world operate on the basic principle that people will not work for nothing. Therefore, if one builds a state-system for meeting the needs of the poor, then a great amount of money will be spent on the system itself, its processes and employees, rather than on the poor people it is meant to serve – unless the employees are willing to work for nothing. This marks the fundamental difference between old philanthropy and modern state-systems. Old philanthropical works were done by those who did not need to be compensated for their time and effort – women who were dependant on reliable husbands and the very wealthy – these people did not take anything from the work.

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22 thoughts on “Spectacles”

Much here, Nicholas, and I hope others chime in as well. It brings to my mind a conversation I had on Twitter yesterday. It was about Alfie but could have been about most anything. His contention was that the state knew best vis a vis the parents, my comment was that in the particular case that may be true, it is then incumbent on the state to convince the parents, not to essentially kidnap the child and do what they want. That’s prologue, basically.

In the end, I fell back on St Augustine and ML King that an unjust law is no law, and that we have a positive duty to disobey it, always assuming we consider the price worth it. I got back the normal claptrap about would you not pay taxes, or stop for the police. I didn’t think of it then (wish I had) but everything that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and all the others did was strictly legal according to their government.So his question to me “Who decides?” rings quite hollow to me. My answer is, of course, God decides. But he was a British (I think) atheist, and so the question has no answer for him, other than the state. I can’t really think of a worse answer.

In Lutheran theology, much of this comes down to Two Kingdoms, with the King ruling over both of them. It does not concede the secular to the world, but remembers that there is also the otherworldly, which is where we are also citizens, and answerable to our Lord directly. “Sins of commission and sins of omission” is Cranmer’s construction, if I remember, and one is not less evil than the other.

Great comment, NEO, and good work keeping up the fight on Twitter. I generally shy away from there, but if you’re making a good go of it, more power to you. Completely agree about the dictators. People should step back from idea that we should just obey and think about whether particular laws are just or not.

Good points Nicholas. When the government gets involved in redistribution of wealth through taxes imposed on the working men and women the rational outcome is a disincentive to work or moving one’s company to a different country. The result is less profitable businesses and less jobs or no business and no jobs should they go elsewhere. How then does one continue to give the ‘fiat’ currency which represents the work of those who earned it to those who did not? And they do this without the consent of those citizens but by laws enacted. The outcome is certain. The economy stalls or takes a nose dive, there are less jobs and more people enter the ranks of the poor and more money is needed to care for them though there is nothing to be had since the economy is getting smaller and the spending is increasing. The country becomes insolvent.

The best thing you can do for the poor is to bolster the economy and give people the freedom to earn and spend their money as needed which creates a booming economy and more jobs and more money for that which might be used to lift up or educate those who are poor or disabled. The idea is to afford the poor opportunities to work and become self-sufficient unless severely handicapped in which case there is always some who will need the help of Church run institutions of care . . . but I would keep the government out of this as well. It is not their responsibility but the responsibility of any human being who has love in their heart and wishes to help those who cannot help themselves.

When I grew up we did not have poor people populating our parks and sleeping in subways and under bridges. But since we opened the gates to the asylums and prevented families from seeking intensive help for the mentally disturbed, alcoholic or drug addict we see the problem growing. All of these problems were rare if not non-existent before the government did what Ronald Reagan warned against: coming into our lives and saying that we are the government and we are here to help. They have not the competency to do so. Better to allow families to seek help and have their struggling family members committed to a health facility that specializes in their specific mental problem.

So we wonder where the violence comes from and where the all the homeless comes from in such a wealthy nation? It is not that hard to figure out really; the government got involved.

It is interesting you should say that, Scoop. Where I live, I have noticed a steady rise in homeless people over the past couple of years. Mainstream pundits would say this is because of the Tories’ austerity measures, but I think that is a simplistic analysis at best.

I become more and more convinced that there, and here, as well, much of many ills can be laid to mass immigration, we absorbed it more gracefully, but we’re quite a lot larger, but if one looks at California, well it speaks rather loudly. The other main cause is the increasing irrelevance of men in parts of society. Haven’t developed any coherent thinking yet, but that seems to be what I’m seeing.

Yeah, this is quite a complex issue, which is why it is (a) difficult to analyse and (b) hard to suggest answers for. The fact is, all people are individuals. Some people have made bad choices, and you could argue that they should accept the consequences in that the state should not be called in to help (but private charity should be free to). Other people have ended up in this situation largely because of externalities -e.g. mental illness. They cannot be held blameworthy for ending up in this situation.

It is simpler than that explanation. It is government doing what it is not commissioned to do and obviously the huge invasion of immigrants on top of that: another government program that is failing miserably.

Indeed. There are very few things, in my opinion, that the government may legitimately do. I am not quite an anarchocapitalist, but I tend very much in that direction. I think we should take more inspiration from the Old West and the Hanseatic League.

Well there only a few regulations necessary to assure fairness and to discourage fraud, slave labor and other abuses. The problem with government power is that it travels all the way down to the most personal levels of obstructionism.

When I was a child and home sick from school because of a cold or flu, a note from my mother was all I needed to excuse my absence. By the time I had children, the schools had withdrawn their trust in the parents and the child had to have a doctor’s note; meaning that I would have to pay to take my child to a doctor to get the child a note. Another way that the rights of parents were stripped. And more than likely, to my mind, this was probably done in most states by political pressure groups like the AMA to assure that they would get more money for their doctors. I am sure that they gave the state politicians copious amounts of money to pass these laws. That same cabal is behind the drug laws at the beginning of the 20th century that banned the opium poppy. Before that cow hands and farm workers could buy or grow these homeopathic plants as part of their daily care for things like diarrhea, headache and the aches and pains of a hard day on the farm or ranch. Corruption breeds corruption and we see it everywhere.

Indeed. I am a firm believer in concupiscence: this is why I reject the statism of the leftists. We pollute what we touch and the pollution spreads. To make Leftism work, we would have to be God Himself. Indeed, I think sometimes that many things politicians do amount to playing God.

Indeed. This is what rebellion against Christianity has done to our laws. We were certainly not perfect before, but the common Christian culture at least placed some limits on the behaviour of government. There was a time when Whigs and Tories, for all their differences, agreed not to cross certain lines. Now nothing is safe, and we are plummeting like Satan cast out of heaven.

Additionally, to the arguments Wm. F Buckley articulates is the rise of the drug cartels such as we find in Afghanistan and Mexico and one of the leading reasons why people are fleeing the violence of Mexico and illegally entering our country.

I agree. Frankly, as long as the law still penalises people for driving under the influence of drugs and employers can fire employees for working under the influence, I don’t care what they do in their own homes. I’m a firm believer that Prohibition tells us making a crime of something just creates a dangerous underground market for it and encourages a generally rebellious attitude. We also need to remember that alcohol, for example, is not inherently evil. Abuse of the substance is the issue.

That was WF Buckley’s point. Most people who have used drugs, as alcohol, either no longer use it or use it sparingly. It is a very small minority that have a substance abuse problem that is on-going and our money is better spent trying to get them treatment rather than fighting a ghost that you will never be able to defeat. It causes more harm than the laws were meant to fix. Another gigantic government boondoggle that puts us all in danger of theft, muggings and violence . . . not to mention the corrupt of all of Mexico’s government by the drug cartels that murder people who meddle in their affairs.

Indeed so. And why should the farmers of another country supply our pharmaceutical countries with the raw materials for their drugs when our farmers could do this easily. Especially since the money we give them goes to war lords and all kinds of evils.

Indeed. And those warlords commit terrible crimes against Catholic priests who oppose them, and keep their countries stuck in an agrarian mindset. There will be no development in Latin and South America until North America outcompetes them at producing drugs. When the demand collapses, they will have to diversify.